I’ve got all my life to live, and I’ve got all my love to give, and I’ll survive. I WILL SURVIVE!

So sang Queen Diana Ross at the grand re-opening of King’s Theatre in Flatbush, Brooklyn. On that cold, February night, Ross’s words were less about spurned love than the stage on which she was performing: After almost 40 years of disuse, decline, and decay, this monumentally beautiful palace was back – all to the tune of a $95 million restoration, the product of a public/ private partnership.

If this hypnotic, sold-out evening was any indication, the Kings will continue to survive, dammit. It will survive.

————

I got a few, harried iPhone pictures in while attending Ross’s concert – check them out… and then see the theatre for yourself.

The theatre is 3,200 seats strong, and not one of them is bad. (Believe me. I was in the very rear of the mezz and almost felt the ruffle of Ross’s tulle gowns.)

The governing principle behind the space’s design seems to be “more is more;” it’s impossible to argue with this philosophy when greeted by a box this sumptuous, this lavish:

Unlike, say, a typical Broadway theatre, the Kings is incredibly open, the mezz extending over only a few rows of the rear orchestra. This openness makes the space really feel like an arena.

The lobby is no less impressive than the house…

… and it features several architectural treasures like this old lighting unit.

Renovations this extraordinary face mind-numbing obstacles of politics and finance… so three hearty cheers to everyone involved in an urban renewal this miraculous. THANK YOU for bringing this gorgeous gem back to life!

Did you think I’d crumble?Did you think I’d lay down and die?Oh no, not I! I will survive!

To learn more about this and other so-called “Wonder Theaters,” click HERE. See what’s playing next at the Kings HERE.

Deepin Brooklyn sits the old Loew’s 46th Street Theater, a faded film palace now annexed by a furniture store. It’s beyond repair—and not beautiful enough to mourn—but still worth the peek I got on a recent Sunday.

Here’s how the space looks from the street…

But here’s what you see once you convince the owners to let you back in the storeroom! (Would that all storerooms looked so cool…)

See what I mean about “beyond repair”? But also kind of ruin-porn beautiful…

The space under the mezzanine is part of the furniture store, so it’s been walled off…

… but the balcony still exists, even if it’s very dimly lit.

The space is interesting on closer inspection, too… and creepy!

I shut off the lights as I left, but one, lone bulb still shone from the stage. The space might be filled with furniture, littered with garbage, and crumbling from disrepair, but wonder of wonders… it’s still got a ghost light!

You, too can visit this crumbly-beautiful theater! It’s at 4515 New Utrecht Ave. in Brooklyn. Get a good book, hop on the subway, and make a day of it. Just don’t go on Saturday—per the area’s Hassidic population, the area totally shuts down on the Sabbath.

…despite this intricately designed and perfectly executed ornamentation…

…despite this tremendously preserved craftsmanship…

…despite all of this, the Mark Hellinger sees no dancing feet, no 11 o’clock numbers, no matinee ladies.

How can this be, you ask?

Once upon a dark time—the 1980’s!—the Nederlander Organization (then the owner of the Hellinger) leased, and in 1991 sold the space to the Times Square Church, which has operated the 1,600-seat jewel ever since. “It’s a question of economics,” Nederlander’s Arthur Rubin said at the time. “We can’t fill the theaters we have, and the city has not given us tax abatements when the theaters are dark.” With that, the one-time home of hits like My FairLady and Jesus Christ Superstardisappeared from the boards.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the Times Square Church has taken exquisite care of the space, and makes it open to the public. I took a self-guided tour between services on a recent Sunday and was thunderstruck at the theater’s glory.

Care to look around?

The theater’s plain exterior, on 51st Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue, belies the glories within.

There is one interesting outdoor feature, however. This fellow, one of a pair!

Interestingly, the theater’s entrance used to be on Broadway. But nowadays, entering on 51st, visitors enter into this blindingly beautiful lobby…

Above everything hangs a chandelier…

But the true glory is inside, where the sumptuousness is unending. Click on the panorama below for a better view.

The boxes are worthy of the world’s starriest celebrities, dignitaries and the like.

The Hellinger is not without quirks, though! On the far sides of the house are narrow, two-seat rows. As beautiful as they are, they’re also kind of hilarious. “Enjoy your date in the privacy of your own row,” you imagine a box office guy telling a customer. “You’ll love it!”

But these photos only hint at the thrill of seeing the space in person. Drop by some afternoon and bathe in the gold-leaf patina of it all. (The church’s hours and can be found HERE.)

As for whether or not the Hellinger will ever again house plays or musicals, a 2010 Playbill.com article says that the answer, for the forseeable future at least, is no. Ah well. One wishes that, back in 1989, a less theatrical space had been volunteered to the church (the Minskoff, anyone?) but such was not to be.

Like this:

If you’re like me, old, repurposed theaters both thrill and dismay you. On the one hand, it’s exciting to see something familiar in a surprising light (how will they use that mezzanine?!); on the other, it’s always a bit sad to see the breeding grounds of art turned into a deli or a shoe store.

That melancholic mixture—half smile, half tear—arrives full bore at the Empire Garden Restaurant in Boston. Known in legitimacy as the Globe Theateror as Loew’s Globe Theater, the EGR successfully retains much of its theatrical charm, making a hell of a backdrop for dim sum. Still… it makes a hell of a backdrop for dim sum. Enough said.

Dipping under its deep red marquee, a small, uneventful lobby takes you to a TV-studded, classical stairway.

Another lobby waits at the top…

… and snif snif—you’re in dim sum land!

Make sure to mind the carts as you enter the gorgeous seating area. (Apparently the panels in the proscenium open up to reveal another dining area, opened for weddings and such.)

After ordering, run on up to that proscenium and take in the plaster.

Just don’t think too hard about the strange collision of Eastern and Western art behind you!

The entire restaurant, the owner explained to me, sits one floor level above what would’ve been the orchestra section. (As if the stairs weren’t enough of a giveaway, the proscenium’s legs tell the original story: They’re almost comically short.)

But that original ground level grants no hint of its glitzy, lavish past. Today, it’s an Asian foods market.

So: Yes, it’s cool to have your lunch in such gilded splendor. Who doesn’t want a little cherub watching as you eat pork dumplings?

But it’s also a bit sacrilegious, isn’t it? Knawing your way around a temple of theater?

Fun fact: Not all Masonic temples house self-flagelating albino monks or creepy, cloaked knights. (Thanks,DaVinci Code andEyes Wide Shut for that one.) As I found out in Detroit—on tour with If You Give a Mouse a Cookie-–some such temples are pretty normal, pretty cool theaters. (As for the above photos, yes, that’s a prop milk jug. Such are the trappings of children’s theater.)

Our particular haunt sported some religious-y flying buttresses and a Gothic, arched ceiling. But the rest of the digs were purely secular. Some good, blood-red “legs” (as they’re called in the biz) framed our singing and dancing…

… and a set of dainty ropes started their trip to the fly tower, ready to open vents in case of fire.

More vintage treasures were to be found here…

and here…

… but pity the actor forced to rely on this set of floor directions:

After all, if they directed him here, to the American Horror Story-style loading dock, who knows what could happen to him?

Even worse, how could he defend himself in the elevator from these terrifying miscreants?

The rest of the theater seems to shrug, “yeah, I’m good looking… (thank you, by the way)… but look at the play, not me, why don’t cha?” Sort of like a perfectly-dressed date: good looking, but not too effortful. Not self-obsessed. Into plays, not flash.

The metaphor continues. The lobby is the coiffure, something well-groomed and classy but not overwrought. Not over-gelled or sprayed or dyed.

Like this:

Can architecture be both modern and primal? Stephens Auditorium at the Iowa State Center, a recent stop of mine, argues yes! it can! For proof, first examine the jagged, toothlike boxes (above) than hang over the vast orchestra (below).

They’re equal parts Modernism and tribalism, reason and fury, security and danger, violent, giant spears put to contemporary use. Looking at them, I think of mod, Le Corbusier-like starchitects, but also of ancient, primitive South American clans. Quite the coupling, eh?

This odd dance of eras plays out all over the space, from the cavern of the house…

… to the starship-meets-temple exterior.

It’s even present in the exquisite patterns of béton brut (“raw concrete”) that tattoo the building’s in- and exteriors. (Béton brut is a gorgeous style in which the imprints of wooden, concrete molds are left intact rather than smoothed over.) It literally collides old world and new, embossing the present with the past.

Of course, down in the dressing rooms all that matters is makeup and props and water bottles… concerns, I might add, surely shared by those ritualistic, ancient tribespeople.

Like this:

And then there was the day we performed in the Titanic of theaters, the Rialto Square.

Marble, gold leaf, crystal—this baby had it all. First class, here we go!

We’re a children’s show (If You Give a Mouse a Cookieby TheatreWorksUSA, which, by the way doesn’t endorse these opinions) so we’re not exactly used to this grandeur. We play loads of fascinating, beautiful, inspiring houses (see other TheaTour! posts) but Versailles, they’re mostly not.

The Rialto? Versailles it mostly is.

The theater, which opened in 1926 as a movie palace, is mostly GrecoRoman in its style, but don’t miss the Byzantinism of the chandeliers and the decorative boxes, which are swathed in a plaster weave of Middle Eastern patterns.

A dramatically lit relief that appears to depict the birth of Venus is the focal point of the proscenium.

The legs of the proscenium, however, refuse to be outshone.

It’s hard to communicate the sheer size and enormity and relentless splendor of the Rialto, but this panorama gives that a shot.

As actors, my tour-mates and I almost always enter a theater through its backstage, only venturing into the lobby if time permits and access is permitted. Thank heaven, then, that we found our way to this, the mother of the mother of the mother of all lobbies and esplanades.

The columns are scagliola, or imitation marble, though the darker pedestals they stand on are real. The archway is inspired by the Arc de Triomph in Paris, and the esplanade is fashioned after (surprise surprise) the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.

That esplanade opens up into a rotunda, a dizzying circle of grandeur and luxury.

Crowning the rotunda is a chandelier known as “The Dutchess.”

While the gold leaf tapers off backstage, there are plenty of good views to be had, this stack of stairways for one.

And then there’s the lovely star dressing room, which (like other parts of the theater) is rumored to be haunted. (The Syfy show Ghost Huntersrecently made a visit to the Rialto to investigate some of the ghostly claims.)

Outside, an appropriately massive marquis and facade hint at the treats hidden within.

Again and again I’m astonished by the wealth of theatrical treasures that bejewel our United States. Perhaps its the vapors of election night still floating around me, but that wealth makes me feel, well, patriotic.

My friend and I were in downtown Detroit and had ventured into the lobby of something called the Michigan building. Visitors to town, we were unsure what kind of cajoling would be needed to let us into the crumbling theater that we’d heard was hidden inside.

“$20,” said the guard.

“Really?” Too high.

“$10.”

More like it—

“$5”

Sold—

“Just messing with y’all. It’s free—take the elevator the third floor, go right, then through the exit sign.”

2.

I’d read about this place on the Detroit blogs, blogs that sported cool urban-explorer names like “Faded Detroit,” and “detroitfunk.” These sites specialize in what’s become known as “ruin porn,” wistful photography that glorifies deterioration and degeneration. I’m a sucker for that sort of thing, especially when it comes to theaters, so upon learning of this faded palace, I knew I had to make a visit.

The blogs had laid out the basics: Once a palatial, 4,000-seat house featuring the likes of the Marx Brothers, John Philip Sousa and Bob Hope, the Michigan had barely skirted demolition in the late ‘70s, but was converted into a garage when workers in the office building it’s in whined about inadequate parking. The result was a faint echo of the former glory, but some of the old magic, I heard, could still be found.

3.

As directed, my friend and I headed up, went right, made our way down some steps, through another door, and—

“Ahhhhhh—!!!!!!!”

There she was! A brick and plaster cavern, a frozen Rococo tent, the most absurd and fantastical parking lot known to man. The walls rippled Mars brown and red, grey and cement, faded gold and seasick green.

Heaven, in other words.

Navigating the 15-odd cars in hibernation, we found a spot in the center of the shell and pieced together what we could of the theater’s history. Three levels of parking had been installed at some point—we were on the top floor—so that explained our proximity to the glorious ceiling. Glancing up, we could see the gorgeously spoiled plasterwork almost intimately—a glyph here, a fleur-de-lis there.

We turned around, taking in the back of the house. There stood the stub of what must’ve been the balcony. There were the old corridors leading patrons to their seats. And there was what used to be the rooftop of the lobby.

The curve of the ceiling directed our eyes forward, to the proscenium. The concrete floors had cut off both of its legs, but the rounded top sat mostly undisturbed.

Beyond it lay the gap of the stage itself, a vast maw untouched by the parking lot, if not by the elements.

The water dripped and the sun shone through and flanks of rust and mold continued their slow crusade and I couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful. Why? Decay creates a mystical regret that makes us (or me, at least) feel curious and humbled and part of the Bigger Picture, no less guarded from the steady, wearying forces of time than the buildings around us. It’s like looking at the stars and feeling small and big at the same time, and knowing that The Answer, the simple answer, is right there, embedded in something physical just beyond your touch.

4.

Detroiters, of course, are starved for this kind of transcendence. We all know how the city has turned into a brittle chrysalis, how the jobs and the factories and the prosperity have vanished, how the public trust has gone sour. How plywood fills the windows of downtown office buildings. How traffic lights, if they work at all, blink the same eternal pulse: red black red black redblackredblack. How homes lost to foreclosure sprout trees like so many nursery gardens.

This is the roiling landscape Lisa D’Amour chose for her Pulizer Prize finalist of a play, Detroit, seen earlier this fall at Playwrights Horizons.

Walking around the Michigan Theater it was impossible not to think of D’Amour’s play, a play that culminates in the destruction of a house. Taking in the Michigan’s slow demise, I wondered, are its remains so different from the charred beams and joists of D’Amour’s play?

Not really, if only for the delightful happenstance that theaters are often referred to as, well, houses. I love this: What word could be more appropriate for spaces that soothe and rattle, welcome and surprise, nurture and madden?

So there we stood, my friend and I, in a crumbling Detroit house, acting as its small, temporary family.

Of course, a family turns a house into something else entirely.

A home.

There might only have been two of us, but in that moment, we filled the Michigan. She was a full house. A full home.

Making small talk with local theater crews can be tough going, but one question always seems to get a shutmouthed gang chattering: “Any ghost stories here worth knowing about?” Crew guys (and the occasional girl) become positively babbly when given the chance to tell a choice bit about a phantom producer, composer, or director.

Or, every so often, a performer. Even if most of the crew’s stories don’t concern actors, I love to imagine bits of their ghostly essence left behind, some magic sparks floating by that my castmates and I just might be able to breathe in and use onstage.

Those actor-ghost-sparks were of an especially starry caliber at Dayton, Ohio’s Victoria Theatre. Heavyweights like Carol Channing and Faye Dunaway once graced the stage, one of the oldest continuously run in the US. Backstage posters (above) hint at some of the stars of past, and make for fun pre-show perusal.

But beyond the posters, the celebrity meter gets even higher. Victoria alumni also include the likes of Edwin Forrest, Harry Houdini, Al Joson, Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt, the Marx Brothers, Fanny Brice, and many others. This view…

… was their view. This rake…

… is what Carol Channing herself saw as she descended that staircase, singing, “Hello, Dolly!” Do these actors’ ghosts peer down on their performer-descendents from these ornate boxes?

Or are they backstage, gleefully moving props or whispering encouragement?

Featured Posts

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